I Left the Classical Music World, and I Wouldn’t Go Back

It was during my third year in the Music Education program at my university that music stopped being fun for me. I realized that, despite playing violin for 13 years and despite having countless amazing opportunities and experiences open up to me because of it, there was no art or inspiration left in my playing.

Elementary Excitement

I started playing violin when I was eight. There was an assembly at school one morning introducing the new orchestra program and every fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-grader was invited to join. The lady who would be running the program introduced us to the violin, viola, cello, and bass. I was instantly enchanted by all of them.

My grandpa played bass, so later that night, I asked my mom if I could too. With the wisdom of a loving mother, she chuckled and said that the bass was too big for an eight-year-old to be lugging around, but that she liked the idea. She suggested, instead, the violin. One week later, with my new three-quarter sized violin in hand, I was off to my first early morning rehearsal. I never looked back.

Great Opportunities and Growth

Throughout junior high and high school, I remained passionate and curious about my instrument and its world, and was constantly in awe of the musicians around me. Every time I went to regional and state competitions, or got an amazing opportunity — like playing with my state’s professional symphony — I couldn’t take my eyes off the other violinists. They were a-ma-zing.

Seeing the technique they had, their beautiful instruments, and the fantastical pieces they played — it was all magic to me. I wanted nothing more than to be as good as them, and the rush I got from trying to emulate them only pulled me in more. Working with so many other talented musicians, learning widely known pieces of music — like the kinds international symphonies played — and then getting to perform them for large audiences became my favorite things in life.

Crushing It In College

Naturally, I knew studying music in college was my destiny. It’d be the perfect way for me to connect more with my instrument and other aspects of classical music, like theory, history, composition, etc. And even though I wasn’t the strongest technical player, I played with passion and I was sure that that would make up for any shortcomings I had. After all, technique can be taught — playing with heart can’t. And despite auditioning with a piece that was too difficult for me, I got accepted to a solid music program.

Studying music full time was tough, but I loved it. I still remember and think about something my Music Theory professor said at the beginning of my Freshman school year, like an unsettling harbinger:

“Right now there are 55 of you sitting in this classroom. All of you are eager, and many of you are even quite talented. But mark my words — very few of you will make it through this program. In fact, by semester’s end, there will be less than 10 of you still here. If you don’t want that to be you, I suggest you give yourselves over to music completely. Only then will you find your success.”

I wanted to live up to that. I wanted to be one of the few that made it through. And sure enough, the last week of that semester I counted just seven of us left in that class. I was proud to have made it that far when so many others didn’t, but I was admittedly still rattled by her statement. I couldn’t help but think about it at the start of each new semester, letting it motivate me to work hard and embrace music.

Classes were hard, but I couldn’t believe how much I was learning from them. For me, music had gained more dimension now that I knew how to quantify it and even enjoy it through other instruments. When I returned home for the summer after my second year, I was thrilled to be tasked as the new church pianist. However, that was extremely short-lived, as I kept changing the key of songs while playing them, or played major chords as minor ones, chuckling quietly at the power I held at my fingertips. How could I spend a minute thinking about sacrilege when I could modulate keys? Music was amazing.

Life Beyond the Looking Glass

The magic of studying music at a collegiate level had pretty much worn off at the start of my third music year (though it had begun — hardly noticeably, under the slick varnish of fun — during my second year). If I was still here, it was because I saw myself as a serious musician. After all, it was what was expected of me by society, my parents, my professors, and my fellow students, most of whom were likely feeling that same pressure.

The real wear and tear came from performance classes, like symphonic orchestra or private lessons. All music students were expected to spend two hours practicing on our own for every hour we spent in a performance class, which meant at least eight hours a day. We were expected to work hard on each piece of music we were assigned and bring it back in better shape to the next class.

Music students know to expect some criticism from professors during class — after all, it’s how we learn - but to sit through hours of professors going on rabid vitriolic tirades against the students, or to be told that we are lazy because we are relaxing for a half an hour between classes instead of practicing, or just because they’re in a bad mood was not acceptable, but I didn’t know that at the time. I thought it was what I deserved to hear.

I can’t count the number of times I caught glances of panicked musicians enduring a conductor’s wrath, or heard students getting yelled at by their private instructors through closed doors. One conductor occasionally singled out a student in front of others and asked what they were even doing there if they couldn’t play music “properly.”

Things were far more brutal in private lessons, due to them being one-on-one. There was nothing to hide behind. I would get chewed out for “not practicing enough,” despite spending more than the requisite number of hours woodshedding the previous week. I would get chewed out for “not having an expensive enough bow and violin,” which turned into accusations that I “wasn’t taking music seriously enough.” My teacher said I should have spent $10,000 on a bow, and several tens if not hundreds of thousands on a violin, as if I had that kind of money laying around (my setup was okay — I had a bow worth about $800, and my violin was valued at $3800. It was below what other students at my level were spending across the nation, but I just didn’t have it. There was nothing I could do.). He also said that my technique lagged behind many of the other students, and that I should be ashamed that I wasn’t further along — taking no consideration for my lesson history, my learning style or speed, or anything else. He was convinced I wasn’t trying, and he wouldn’t move me forward to new pieces or technical exercises — I was literally stuck in a loop for the foreseeable future. Occasionally my teacher would get so frustrated with me, for seemingly no reason, that he would just dismiss me from my private lesson early and tell me to lock myself in a practice room. It was becoming more and more common for me to leave lessons in tears.

I was genuinely putting my heart into my practice sessions. I still wanted to be a better, stronger musician and to have these accusations and insults hurled at me day after day, week after week, was killing me. I was giving it my best effort, fulfilling my side of the contract, and getting nothing in return from the people I was paying to teach me. For $400 a lesson, I should have been getting information and support in return — it’s what I always offer my own students, and it’s what the good teachers I had before college offered me — it’s the rules.

Heartbroken

As the year wore on, all of that made me not want to practice as much, or at all. It diminished my interest in studying or playing music. Practice sessions turned into hours-long depression slumps and existential crises. What was the point?

Practicing hard got me nowhere anymore. I wasn’t the best violinist, I wasn’t a favorite student, and I sat in the back of the first violin section where I didn’t matter. Even the times where I decided to hold fast to my faith in music and double down in my studies and private practice sessions, I was no longer getting anything out of it. I felt like I was not just drowning, but being held under.

Even though music is art, and art doesn’t have definitions of good or bad or right or wrong, according to my professors, I wasn’t good and many of the things I was doing were wrong. I felt like I had been written off by the professors, deigned not good enough to bother with anymore.

Out the Door

I ultimately had to leave my studies because of an overuse injury that prevented me from continuing. At first, I missed that world like crazy. It had been my community and my whole life for years. My boyfriend noticed my sadness and treated me to symphony tickets, but every time we went, I just ended up in tears. But even if I could go back to before things fell apart for me, I wouldn’t, because classical music doesn’t allow me to be ME.

Living a life within the classical music world means I’m a cog in the system. It means I have to spend tens of thousands of hours honing a fine skill, and tens of thousands of dollars on an instrument. It means pouring my soul out to learn a new piece of music, then being told I am not good enough despite the time, money, and effort I put in. And despite nobody in that world ever defining what “good enough” was; they just told me, all the time, that I wasn’t.

Wasn’t my happiness good enough?

Wasn’t my love and passion for music good enough?

It took me over a decade to realize that, for the classical music world, it wasn’t enough. It took time for me to realize that classical music isn’t about passion or love or happiness. It’s about bending yourself over backwards for someone else’s standards. For someone else’s happiness.

I wouldn’t go back to classical music because I wouldn’t go back to a toxic and emotionally abusive relationship, which is exactly what that was. That world ultimately sucked out my passion and happiness, and it left me really damaged for a long time afterwards.

But after spending years picking myself back up, I now know that I am good enough and that my efforts do matter.